Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Facebook vs Naturism

MEDIA RELEASE: 30th October 2013
The New Zealand Naturist Federation uses Facebook extensively to promote the naturist lifestyle to a wide range of people - our aim being to “normalise nudity” and portray the many benefits it offers.

The social network has recently reversed a ban on a video allowing violence of the highest degree – the beheading of a woman in Mexico by a masked man – and yet our photos portraying nudity in a non-violent, non-sexual way remain banned.

The NZNF Communications Officer has received numerous bans of various lengths of time for posting images showing scenes at naturist clubs – used with permission – some with as little as a butt crack visible. And many other individuals such as breastfeeding mothers and breast cancer survivors have received similar bans with content blocked or removed.

A spokeswoman for the social network told BBC News “Facebook has long been a place where people turn to share their experiences, particularly when they’re connected to controversial events on the ground, such as human-rights abuses, acts of terrorism, and other violent events”.

The US firm have said that users should be free to watch and condemn the video in question. Surely with each user who comments or condemns the video, it is only generating a broader and wider reach of this despicable act – in effect glorifying it?

And surely this also directly contradicts Facebook’s own “Rights and Responsibilities” warning: "You will not post content that: is hate speech, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence."

How exactly are you to ‘condemn’ this video that couldn’t be viewed as a ‘hate speech’? And it is both ‘graphic’ and ‘gratuitous’ violence.

Facebook is a social community maintained and moderated by them but the people who contribute and belong to the community should dictate, like any other society, the rules that surround it.

The ‘community’ hasn’t said they don’t want images of nudity or that a butt crack is offensive, Facebook has. Naturism is a social community - we are the community of Facebook.  

The Federation urges Facebook to reconsider the inconsistent application of its policy with respect to what is deemed to be offensive and revise its practices so that normal nudity is acceptable, semi-pornographic (scantily clad) content that is currently widely displayed is discouraged, and extreme violence should be banned.

3 comments:

  1. NOT defending Facebook here, merely clarifying. We've been blocked and banned a number of times, sometimes when there was NO nudity involved. A report is all it takes for the FB robots to react. Nevermind. We've learned our lesson. Don't mess wIth FB's rules.

    Facebook is a FREE service which is available ONLY to those who agree to abide to FB's rules, like them or not. It is not a democracy and doesn't pretend to be.

    It does rankle that FB has some very weird ideas of what is acceptable, but those ideas are based on what their very expensive analysts have determined to be suitable to FB's majority subscribers. Over one billion of them, Only a few thousands of us, at best have a problem with that. We don't exist, statiscally.

    Simple fact: FB is a stockholder-owned business which is solely designed to maximize profits for shareholders. Got that? FB is not a social engine for the advancement of civilization or to advocate for this or that. It exists only to make profits for shareholders, and they pay well to those who determine what those shareholders want on FB.

    They, the shareholders and subscribers, obviously do NOT want nudity, and complain when they see it. FB responds. We get kicked. They do NOT complain about the other ugly things, so those things do not exist to FB! That's a pity but entirely another subject.

    To those who haven't figured it out yet, the 'reports' against a FB Page don't come from those who are looking for that Page's subject; they come from FB's propensity to 'share' everyone's FB travels with all of their FB 'friends'. You click on or comment on or 'like' something, and your friends, you Mom, your Pastor, hears about it in their newsfeed and freaks out! Then they report the 'obscenity'.

    Thus, the hard-corn porn and child molestation Pages don't get reported because their fans know better than to let others know about them. It's that simple. FB only sees that which is reported to them,

    That's how it works, folks. Get used to it, get smart, and stop posting naked pictures which can get you in trouble. FB is free and a huge promotional tool. Argue for a change in the way they look at things, but be smart and stop provoking them lest you lose the best promotional tool you have.

    All-Nudist doesn't post naked pics on FB yet is, humbly spoken, on top of the heap both with FB followers and worldwide website ranking,. If you offer quality content, quality people will respond. Nudism/naturism isn't about naked pictures anyway, is it?

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  2. It's a mistake to advocate an end of censorship for one thing people find offensive, while at the same time calling for the ban of something else you might find offensive. Many people do not want to see nudity, and others don't want to view images of violence. The correct position to take here is to call for the end of censorship in general.

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  3. If you don't like Facebook's puritan attitude towards nudity, it's not complicated, vote with your feet -> use a naked-friendly social network instead: http://www.naktiv.net/nook/

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